helenguion's page

• To spar with Barahil the Faithful, who is one of her greatest role models for both swordfighting and piety, and win.
• To be part of a restoration of Muir's temple. She believes that with the decline of Muir's following, social classes and expectations are stratifying, but if more people learn and follow Muir's tenets, society will become kinder, fairer, and with fewer barriers.

• Secret that Chiara keeps to herself:

  Chiara is terrified of not doing the right thing. Her faith and trust in Muir is unwavering, but she sometimes doubts that her actions are just, or truly reflect Muir's will. She knows mortals make mistakes, and she's afraid that she will someday make a mistake that will cause her to fall from Muir's grace.
  
  
• Secret that Chiara doesn't know:

  Chiara's father had an affair with one of his apprentices, who quit working for him once he got her pregnant and refused to acknowledge his son. The child, Keldaire Trebonne, is roughly Chiara's age, grew up even poorer than Chiara, and is deeply hurt and resentful of Chiara and her family. Though he grew up a city boy, he is learning to love the outdoors with the help of his new pet, an enormous spider that he calls Fluffy.
  
  

• Lissete Gilund recruited Chiara to Muir's temple, and Chiara desperately wants to prove herself to Lissete and make her proud.
  
• Her parents Neela Suri and Caro Tobea are a stonemason and a blacksmith, respectively. Never very wealthy, they were financially ruined when Neela was injured by a magical trap while working on a wizard's house, and Caro mortgaged his smithy to pay for the healing. They expect to be paying back the debt for the rest of their lives, even with any extra income Chiara can give them.
  
• Timur Namarr, the son of proud but impoverished nobility, grew up two houses down from Chiara. They were inseparable as children, but as they grew up, Chiara and Timur fought about whether bloodlines and family really defined someone's destiny. Timur eventually married into a wealthy family and stopped associating with Chiara or anyone else from their lower-class neighborhood. Chiara feels that Timur's buy-in to the aristocratic system is a betrayal of their neighbors and her family, and though Chiara won't admit to any enmity or bad feeling, she is bitter that her oldest friend would leave her behind just to climb the social ladder.
  
• It's complicated with Aurelie Ng. Aurelie joined Muir's temple a year before Chiara; also Lissete's pupil, she and Chiara were not-so-friendly rivals as well as occasional lovers. Eventually their drama became a distraction to others in the community, leading Lissete to send Aurelie out on a different mission a few months before the exploration of the Stoneheart Valley. Chiara misses her terribly.
  

• During one of Barahil's visits to Muir's temple, he took the time to spar with all of the new recruits. He thrashed Chiara thoroughly, but told her afterwards that if she would just learn to fight dirty, she could be great someday. Since then---and goaded by competition with Aurelie---she has been inspired to become the best virtuous bravo the temple has ever seen.
  
• Chiara grew up in a rough area, and saw firsthand the casual cruelty of the rich towards the poor, including how blithely ignorant the wealthy are towards their own power. She is angry that rich men rarely if ever face consequences when their actions harm others, and in particular that the wizard whose carelessness nearly killed her mother died of old age, never having been brought to justice.
  
• Chiara's parents both worry about Chiara's decision to become a paladin, but just before she joined the church, Chiara received a vision from Muir which caused her to join despite her parents' objections. Though she has not been granted another vision from the goddess since pledging herself, she has never forgotten the sense of grace and purpose.
  

I don't scare too easily, but I admit I'm not a big fan of spiders.